In Our Nature: Book Two
by ninety6tears
Summary: After four of the ship's officers never returned from an away mission, Spock reluctantly assumed the role of captain on the Enterprise. Jim Kirk is meanwhile becoming the Terran Empire's most wanted fugitive in a slowly transforming mirror universe. Both of their fates may be affected by the self-fulfilling prophecy of a man who has very little to lose.
1. Spock

_**A/N:** I was fairly adamant about not wanting to update this fic as a WIP, but since it will reach something of a natural stopping point after a few parts, I decided to start it up; just be warned there will be a hiatus coming up after three chapters, assuming I don't change my mind._

_At present this looks to be about the same length as Book I, but we'll see. Book II will complete the main story of ION, but there may be more to come from this continuity after I've finished._

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chapter 1

**spock**

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1 DAY

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On the day that Jim Kirk's luck ran out, Spock began to lose track of time.

The hours during the four's initial absence felt filled to the brim with empty explanations; it seemed that without the captain's quick manner of insistence, without him at Spock's side, Spock was prone to overcomplicated forms of managing the rest of the crew's role in ensuring it would be possible for him and the other three to return. Even when describing to the members of engineering and assistance who were the most comfortable with transdimensional theory how this was one of thousands upon thousands of unpredictable variables in the lifetime of this part of the universe's ionic irregularity, that they were in the fragile pocket of a rip in reality that would collapse from eager and open to a metal wall of impenetrability for good, even then he felt that he was alone in understanding the precariousness of the situation. He was assured later on that this was only a skewed perception. It did not matter in the end; there was nothing that any of them could have done.

When he was not monitoring the readings in the transporter room himself, he had Chekov stationed there, poised to alert him at the peak opportunity for the transporter transmission to be attempted again. But the problem came from the other side; it was untouchable even as it cracked through the disruption, heavy and fateful but mockingly subtle.

This all began with Spock receiving Chekov's voice over the comm system: "Sir, there is a problem."

Spock was certain when he arrived at the transporter room that there were crew members lingering there for no protocol-abiding reason, but he almost did not notice; he was singularly focused on examining the new readings himself.

"The readings suddenly became...irregular—" Chekov stammered to explain to everyone else in the room, "They have been irregular the whole time, of course, but it was no longer following the same pattern. Before, the dimensions were waving closer to one another in tandem, now..."

It was the rest of the room that needed him to continue; Spock had not looked up from the chart since he first walked in and went right for the first transporter console.

"It is the slightest shift in the pattern, but it will become increasingly rather than less dangerous, for them to..." Chekov shook his head, again and again, unable to tell any of the eyes trained on him what they wanted to hear.

Spock spoke into the comm: "Giotto, begin escorting the four passengers to the transporter room." He then addressed everyone else. "My calculations would be more exact if I was privy to the other universe's readings, but I estimate between a fifteen and twenty percent chance of successful dimensional transportation, assuming the four are attempting it at this time."

"And if they're not?" a quiet ensign asked.

"Their chances will only dwindle." Spock finally uttered the bleak explanation for anyone present who wouldn't specialize in the science of the readings: "We are monitoring irregularities in the warp stream which can only be explained by faint cross-readings received from a nearly identical transporter in the alternate reality, and this data suggests that the functionality of the other transporter has been tampered with."

"You're bringing the others in here...Why, so they can try to take the gamble?" Sulu asked.

"Should we really do that?" Chekov could be quite forward in his most emotional states.

"It is their prerogative to take the risk," Spock replied, but he was still evaluating the factors somewhere underneath the other noise in his mind, and Sulu finally spoke up from where he stood next to Chekov.

"But you're saying that there would have to be a trade-off, one or more of them would have to decide to take the risk and see what happens, and that it's a lot more likely to work if the counterpart is going into the stream at relatively the same time."

"Yes."

"But none of them would do it. Not even Kirk." Sulu interrupted the couple opening mouths, explaining with immediate certainty, "In some other world, somewhere safer, he'd make himself the guinea pig, sure, but think about what their doppelgangers have been like since they got here, what kind of place it must be that they came from. Would he leave the other three to such a hostile world, on their own? I don't think so."

"...I agree with that assessment," Spock realized hollowly. His mouth was open for a second before he managed to comm security and tell them to belay the order to remove the four from the brig. "Also, please inform them in as decent a manner as possible that they will not be returning home."

A vague, slightly sick noise went around the room at the certainty that paralleled what Spock had just said. Sulu sighed. "We could still let the other Kirk take the risk?"

"Are we confident in knowing what Jim would do or are we not?" Spock demanded, though he understood the reach for hope, that Jim may attempt it after all, that someone could be salvaged. "We will not recklessly forfeit any of their lives."

Sulu was already conceding with defeat, "You're right. Just...Jesus," his voice finished in a small astonished mutter.

A long air of stunned silence overtook the transporter room. Yet another member of engineering came walking in, matching the way the rest of the room seemed oddly out of breath, and her face took on a flatness of realization before someone took her by the arm and whispered something to her.

Remembering himself, Spock stepped back to the nearest console and pressed the announcement comm to active.

He did not know how long it was, how much time went by then, before he realized how his voice had caught in his throat and he was leaning over the computer system poised with unworded news, unable to grasp them into speech. He had never in his entire life experienced quite this incapacity to form words. The moment became tangibly rooted when Spock realized Sulu was now next to him, a hand resting on the side of the console after some aborted motion.

Sulu appeared to be exchanging a look with Chekov before he held down the mute on the comm and said, "Listen, I'll do it."

Spock was on his way back to the bridge as the announcement emptied the rest of the ship of any clammering noise, dimming all motion almost to a frozen stop.

"Attention, all crew members..." Sulu hesitated and then left his name out of the announcement, possibly out of hesitation to state his rank. "I regret to inform all of you that after an unforeseeable irregularity in our readings of the transporter functions, I have just been informed that a rescue of the missing away team has been evaluated as a practical impossibility..."

Word had clearly made it to some through private comm systems even faster than official information; Spock's slower than normal pace through one corridor took him by the sight of Nurse Chapel crying tightly into the shoulder of a communications officer. At every turn he was met with the sight of people clutching some proximal sleeve, hands over mouths in shock at what they were hearing.

"Captain James T. Kirk, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, and Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy are as of now permanently missing. The _Enterprise_ will now report to the nearest Starfleet outpost; duties must be carried out at full capacity until then. The crew will be informed of any other pertinent information as it comes. Sulu out."

The situation being one that significantly paralyzed productivity for the next two days of travel, Spock felt it necessary to arrange a meeting for the sole purpose of rank reassignment, as if to gently remind those who now inherited certain responsibilities that they were fully capable of doing them. Perhaps this was some reassurance Spock needed himself, but for the time he found himself in the first of several companionable confrontations with Sulu, who called him out on seeming hesitant.

"None of that is needed," Spock said in mild dismissal, and abruptly added, "but if you feel capable of assuming command for two days, I believe I will require 48 hours off duty." He ignored a rocky surface of bitterness and discomfort with putting an actual number on the emotional process, but it was more than he would have allowed himself in a similar situation years ago.

"Why?" Sulu blinked and then mumbled, "I mean, what should I state as the formal reason?"

"I should think I am in a state of extreme emotional stress and temporarily unfit for duty. Nurse Chapel," he said just as shortly as she was in the vicinity, "I require an evaluation of my mental health as is routinely required in the instance of duty relief, if you could ensure that I am on the roster."

Christine Chapel looked struck, if only in the way one did when they were just barely able to juggle thinking about more than one thing. "Oh. We don't have to do that right away...But I'll have someone let you know."

He nodded and walked away.

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While it was a habit Spock had at first found a bit more lax in decorum than appropriate, Jim had begun shortly into the five-year mission to foster a neighborly area around the living quarters of the ship by leaving the door to his quarters open when he was off duty and requiring no privacy. It had become somewhat customary and unique to the social atmosphere aboard the _Enterprise_, but Spock's first day on leave marked the first time he left the door open himself.

He had been sitting at his desk attempting some reorganization of his history data when his consideration had landed and then froze on the chess set still stranded in an unfinished game. He did not realize the presence of Christine Chapel until she gently cleared her throat.

When he looked up she seemed to be aware of something in the room she was interrupting. "Is this a bad time, sir?"

Spock was already noting a new transparency to Chapel's character that had emerged since the disappearance. She had often been a little fumbling and cumbersome in his presence; he had soon after first meeting her objectively concluded that she was attracted to him, though perhaps was oblivious to the fact. As of now there was no more shy sparkle in her eyes, and she was now speaking to Spock at all times with the type of frankness she'd previously reserved for medical duty. He did not have to wonder what had incited the sudden change, as if she was suddenly but permanently more indifferent about certain things.

"What is the problem, Nurse Chapel?"

She held out a PADD she'd carried in and in a burdensome way explained, "We're kind of dealing with an incident that is too unorthodox to be recognized by the record system?"

"How is this in the realm of your duties?" he asked when he looked at the form on the screen.

"That would be the problem, sir. The accident wasn't reported as crew members going missing because—I mean, obviously that's a whole different set of protocol and paperwork—and it wasn't reported as a general discharge. But we have to release formal messages to the families explaining what happened, which usually happens with deaths and needs signatures from the medical workers who were on duty at the time of death, only they're not _dead_, so I don't know what to—"

"Yes, I see the dilemma. I will alter the records, if you are willing to leave them with me."

After a second she quietly said, "Sure," and set the PADD in front of him. Her gaze lingered on the chess set, and then she seemed to be talking herself into something. "Captain, um. While I'm here, I might as well notify you that I intend to request a transfer to go back to work on Earth."

Spock looked up, his back straightening in surprise. "Please state your reason."

He couldn't place the cause for the sudden coldness in her demeanor, except that she was frustrated and did not want to betray too much of her emotions at the moment. Spock found he could very well relate, but it was making their conversation increasingly stilted with such behavior on both ends.

"I'm not proud of it, but I can't honestly say I enlisted for the right reasons. I won't bore you with the personal details." She took a breath. "When certain things didn't work out, I wanted to drop out then, but then I...made such a close friend in Nyota, as you know. And I did enjoy my work, but I'm not even sure I will feel as challenged without working under Doctor McCoy. It's a sentimental assumption, I guess, that I won't be able to enjoy my job again here, but I just can't see the work outweighing how it's going to feel being surrounded by all the memories. I would just feel better starting all over again on a different ship, if I can't return to work somewhere back home. I know that it's a selfish reason to want a transfer and I understand if you won't authorize it, but I wanted to be honest. Sir."

"I will note your request without judgment. As the current captain of this vessel, I am obliged to say I will regret the loss of your service, Miss Chapel." He meant it. He realized that he wished there was more he could ask her.

But she let out a bit of a laugh, dark but not quite bitter. "Come on. You'll barely notice I'm gone."

He was not quite able to form a reply before she quickly turned and left.

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Over the next month, Sulu found his footing in his new position. Spock had consistently found him an unpredictable person, the type who occasionally came out of a seemingly submissive nature to give a strongly worded disagreement only when it felt necessary to him. Spock found after a point that he made a sharp first officer, if not one who would have been very fitting with a captain more like Jim. Sulu was usually less vocal than Spock had been as X.O., but when his input was solicited he always proved that he was thinking situations through far more often than he appeared to be.

Spock did not personally see to the issues of the four prisoners who labeled themselves members of a "Terran Empire," only pausing from a day on the bridge to concede with the security personnel that they were best kept in the brig, this deliberation unofficially affected by the fact that a Klingon they had to apprehend for some involvement in piracy quickly expressed some unease with them after being in the cell just next to them for only a night. Spock had to at first give the crew some hard words about not entering the brig without a valid reason, as many were clogging it with their grim curiosity for the first day or two.

They finally received their orders from Starfleet to take them to Terra rather than an outpost so that an ideal amount of psychological evaluation could be applied. Spock emphasized being ethically objective, perhaps uncomfortable with the notion of them being expected to obey laws that were entirely foreign to them in his discomfort with the possibility that his former companions would not be receiving the same treatment.

He was granted an amount of authority on the matter of the exiles' fate as if it was some consolation tool. It did not console him in the least.

He may have been less surprised by their eventual escape if he had been surveying their behavior more closely, but those who had been on security duties had warned all relevant personnel not to allow them out of their cells under any circumstances. This required, therefore, that any kind of emergency would require someone to enter the cell rather than escort them to medical services, and this was in the end used to their advantage.

He was planetside with Sulu when it happened. As reported to him later, the events transpired from the point when a scuffle was acted out between the prisoners, resulting intentionally in Scott's counterpart sustaining enough injuries to require a small amount of medical attention. It was unknown how the prisoners managed to steal the phaser from the member of security who let in Nurse Riner, because in some kind of orchestrated attack, the nurse was struck unconscious before she had the chance to alert anyone on her comm unit of the emergency. The four exiles quickly after managed to get an ensign held at gunpoint, demanding the bridge to block all communications and supply them with an escape pod.

Lieutenant Freeman, the officer whose phaser was stolen by Kirk, was the one person killed in the incident.

Sulu more or less matched Spock's professional façade when they were first informed, but once they were discussing it in private with the senior of security he was clearly frustrated about the disaster. Spock assumed it was the matter of him never before being in such a high position of responsibility when the ship lost a member, though it was illogical to assume their absence had been a factor in the success of the escape, and either way, they'd had no way of communicating even when they began to suspect something was amiss.

Spock had encountered many kinds of immorality in his own universe, but something about those four, masked in the bodies of familiar friends, resonated with the crew much more terribly than anything heard of before on their mission. Spock rarely had nightmares, but something about the escape of the four counterparts made him uneasy in his bed for weeks.

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30 DAYS.

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"Are you sleeping enough?...You can put your shirt back on." Nurse Chapel took a last check at his records, pacing back a bit and peeking through the edge of the privacy curtain in response to hearing someone come in.

"No, I do not believe I am acquiring sufficient sleep." Spock had never been in the habit of changing subjects, but he now said, "Miss Chapel, I should inform you that Starfleet has reviewed your request for a transfer and that it may be up to a year before they can consider it an appropriate time to relieve officers in your position from galactic duty. You may know that there have already been two other transfer requests made recently, and if those officers are given their respective requests, I hope you realize it is because of the quality of your service that you are considered indispensable at present."

She blinked at the oddly angled comment, the way he was straightening out his quickly placed shirt and sitting up ramrod straight in order to assume some presence of authority that wasn't entirely achieved sitting on the medical bed. She said flatly, "Alright. I'm not exactly surprised."

"This is not a rejection of your intentions, I hope you realize, however Starfleet is still having to be unaccommodating because of the many cadets that were lost in the Nero incident..."

Chapel did not look like she was quite listening to him now. She swerved, still in a slightly pacing way, tapping her nails against the PADD she was holding before she lightly tossed it onto the bed next to where Spock sat. "How are you handling this?"

Spock was in no mood to be pedantic, so instead of pointing out the illogical change of note, he only raised an eyebrow.

"I mean...those people. They _murdered_ one of us, maybe somebody they even recognized from where they come from, like it was nothing."

Spock took a moment to consider himself before saying, "I do not wish to discuss this."

"Well, who am I supposed to talk to about it, sir?" Chapel's voice rose in frustration, a note to it as if it was laughing at its own insubordination just before she managed to remember the propriety of the setting. "I have no idea how to ask you if you're doing alright. You and I may have never exactly been buddies, but Nyota was my best friend on this ship. I know, maybe better than anyone else here, that you've just lost the most important people in your professional and personal life all in one go, and I'm trying to tell you that I'm here, I have some idea of how this feels."

"And you're leaving as soon as you can," Spock reminded her.

Her expression pulled back in, a deliberate blankness coming over her. Something about it disarmed him.

"Nurse Chapel," he found himself dutifully asking, "are you alright?"

"...No." She shook her head, again and again. "I'm not okay. I have these awful dreams, because four of the most undeserving people I can think of have been thrown into some place that I can't see, but I know it can't be good, and people around me keep talking as if...they're just dead. When it could be worse than that for all we know. If everyone around them is like those people? If you could tell me, logically, that I should be grieving, rather than worrying, rather than panicking, maybe eventually I could move on. But it just won't leave me alone."

It was as if she'd solved some riddle, pointed out something in a picture he'd been staring at for days, or for weeks. She looked at him, and immediately her expression was pulled into confusion.

"What? Are you okay?"

"...Of course I'm not alright," Spock said.

"Captain?"

Spock was replacing his uniform over his undershirt in a short series of movements. "The title would be acting captain, to be exact."

She stammered after him, "Sir?..."

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The meeting was tacked into a crevice between second and third shift. Two thirds of the crew who had any esteemed skill with sciences were present, as well as a number who straggled in from engineering, and some others who simply wanted to watch, filling the conference room all the way to the back. No one really knew what the meeting was about, but there was an anxious buzz of curiosity that Spock took almost a minute to signal down. It reminded him of academy students getting restless before the weekend, only the stirrings were not so elated.

"I understand the circumstances of this meeting were not explained in the announcement, so I wish to commence promptly." Spock said, "As you all know, we recently had a very unfortunate and also very unique incident in which we lost four members of our crew, including our captain. We have since the accident proceeded with the five-year mission as planned. And we have no need to suspend the mission. However."

Spock's pause held the room in a transparent and yet motionless shift of curiousity, as if no one dared to anticipate or speculate. He continued.

"I believe that the recent violent actions of the counterparts from this other universe, who are the only individuals we have to represent the world in which we must speculate our missing crew members do now inhabit, give us reason to reevaluate the grounds for procedural dismissal of the mission that caused the four to become stranded. It is after all imperative that we mourn our losses, but it is imperative also that Starfleet members resort to all possible measures not to leave behind people who are still alive. For these reasons, I have evaluated the status of the events of stardate 3163 and promoted it to the necessity of a rescue mission."

The room hissed into dialogue, several hands of the more earnest raising at once.

"I have spoken already with Ensign Chekov, who is aware of a theory of how we may proceed in attempting a deliberate transdimensional leap." The room was already quiet again. "We will require the help of anyone with an excelling grasp on sequential mathematics and algorithms. There may be further opportunities for other members of the crew with further developments; what I must clarify is that the project is _secondary_ to our preexisting mission, and is also compulsory. I must stress that this mission will, in all practical considerations, embody your extracurricular time. Anyone who is not comfortable considering at this point should not be sitting in this room; you have three minutes to evaluate."

"You're just full of surprises," Sulu leaned in to mutter while the crowd tangled and dispersed.

"I assumed Chekov would have mentioned the matter to you."

"That isn't what I meant." Sulu looked more directly at Spock now for a second, conveying a more serious assuring tone before he nodded and said, "I'm with you. I have no clue if there's any chance in hell we can do anything, but I'm with you on this."

After the three minutes were up, the room had forty-three people.

Once Chekov was done explaining the mere basics of Valoit's theoretical equations, it held twenty.

Sulu was the first to say, "Let's get to work."

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"I'm still not understanding..." Chapel fixed a pondering look down on her lunch. "We already know the equation?"

"Valoit's equation is a proposed figure which cannot be effectively tested until contact with a parallel universe has been made, though one is also at leisure to experiment with spacial irregularities which appear to be possibly transdimensional, which is apparently what Valoit was doing when he was attempting to perfect the science..."

"I thought Valoit was still alive?"

"He is, but it must be noted he did not have the type of motive we do. After attempting to exact the figure for some fifteen years, he retired the project to a hiatus."

"He got bored and gave up," Sulu translated, from where he and Chekov sat with their dining table inched not quite up next to Chapel and Spock's.

Spock considered how to explain further. "While it is a rough abbreviation of the calculations we are attempting, if you imagine an algebraic equation where the result of our universe depends on some unknown variable interacting with the other universe...we, having various statistics on the matter through the dimension gap, are able to repeatedly attempt to solve what we are calling the 'interaction variable,' which could be part of a very large number of calculations."

"And how many permutations are projected to be possible?" Chapel winced. "Like several thousand?"

"Over six million."

Chapel had to slap her hand over her fork in a flustered attempt to keep it from clanging off the table when she dropped it. Chekov and Sulu were exchanging looks as she gathered herself into a schooled look of innocent interest. "Well. I mean, that's good. It's something."

No one asked the long, unbearable line of questions that should have come after, the harsh hypotheticals. (If it worked, and if they could use it to actually get there, if and if and if, how in the name of any deity or science could they depend on actually _finding_ them?)

Possibly the question did not occur to others the way it did to him. Perhaps it was something of a default assumption about their whereabouts that they would still be somewhere in the parallel vicinity of the _Enterprise_, as if that would necessarily be good or safe for them, as if the vessel even had anything like a static location. The circumstances of the gap that swamped the four there depended on an overlap of the ships' points in space, but Spock did not find it hard to imagine that the mere events caused by the transporter accident bumped both worlds off of their correlation by the irregular behavior of those in exile. The prisoners, after all, had escaped.

Spock hoped, with a humming constant faith but also a deep unease at the idea of their absolute distance, that his companions had managed to get away.

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Spock was promptly informed when three of the counterparts, all except Scotty, were found and arrested on a small fleet-colonized desert planet where they had landed after having mechanical difficulties with the pod they stole. A security inspection of the vessel suggested they had been stealing several parts from local merchants for weeks in an attempt to leave the planet, but it was the astounding oversight of simply behaving too brashly that got them noticed by the locals. McCoy and Kirk had been in a violently escalating argument close to a recreational camping site, when a teenager had apparently been too wary of even walking by them on her way to her cabin and went to find the authorities.

Uhura was located rather quickly after that, and none of the three seemed to have any idea where Scott was. He was said to have disappeared only days before. After hours of grueling interrogation the only thing any of them offered was the assumption that Scott had found some other vessel to steal and decided pretty easily it only had room for one.

After the three of them were shipped back to Earth for intensive rehabilitation, Spock was eventually asked, just as before, for any input he had on what should be done with them.

"Split them up. Absolutely." Chapel voiced this agreement with not quite the sentiment he'd expressed; her tone suggested one of horror at the idea of letting them be anywhere near each other considering their conspiring when they were on the ship, but Spock had honestly considered it the best choice for the interests of whatever psychologist might have to somehow sit them in an armchair. He had figured, admittedly with some evident idealism, that being separated from each other and simply immersed in very different moral ideas may allow them to less self-consciously evaluate their situations and perhaps be less defensive against change.

He had little hope, though. The only one of them he spoke to was Uhura. Upon being placed in confinement she was allowed one transmission; once the _Enterprise_ was within the region she asked for him, and he was grudgingly indebted to follow up on her request.

Spock could not describe the grazing discomfort of that conversation. She began with a highly dramatic plea for sympathy, insisting she was frightened and had been helpless to do anything but cooperate with the others' plans in case they saw her as weak and turned against her, and had been getting along that way for much of a year. She was very affecting and Spock had a tremble of doubt over whether it was a fabrication. In the end he coldly asked how Uhura had surmised that her counterpart and himself had been "amiable," the testing implication being that he knew he was "being played," as Jim would have said.

Uhura leaned back, one side of her mouth crooking up into something wry; she said, "Yeah, it was worth a shot." Naturally he did not mention that he was afraid if she'd underestimated his intelligence just a little, pushed a bit harder, she may have been more successful.

McCoy, Spock was told, was being the most cooperative, if extremely defensive and generally unpleasant to be around. If any of them had in fact been pressured into their crimes, the unofficial consensus was that the finger pointed at the doctor. Shortly after he was admitted into a relatively hospitable institution it was imparted to Spock that he had textbook symptoms for manic depression, if not post-traumatic stress disorder. Spock didn't entertain memories of the few times he was in their company, though he did remember McCoy's nervous trembles, the way the supposed doctor had seemed less menacing but more unpredictable. In a candid conversation with his counselor, a Doctor DeSando remarked that morally pinpointing him was something he would be arrogant to presume he could do.

James Kirk offered nothing. He had refused to participate in any kind of interrogation, even when security threatened the worst punishments, most of which would have probably been unlawful for them to actually follow through on, if he refused to even submit to a psychological evaluation. For his stubborness, he remained the prime suspect with the crime of murdering Ensign Freeman and was placed in a high-security prison close to Tokyo, pending trial.

Weeks later, an explosion triggered by a phaser that had been dangerously tampered with blew an entire side off of the prison building, resulting in twenty-six deaths, many serious injuries, and the escape of several prisoners, including Kirk. If the reckless method of triggering the explosion was in fact Kirk's work, no one between the witnesses and the forensics team knew of a way he might have had direct access to the phaser, but the conundrum held no interest for Spock; he had seen Jim accomplish more improbable things. He understood why Kirk had refused any cooperation even when it was in his best interests: For him it hadn't mattered. He had been determined, and capable, of somehow escaping.

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A couple weeks back, Sulu had come into Spock's quarters holding a couple small crates filled with an assortment of things, and Spock had easily guessed what it all was. Because the captain's and first officer's quarters were identically sized, Sulu had suggested simply moving him into Jim's old cabin. The offer had probably not only been what seemed sensible but, in a way, a thoughtful gesture on his part.

"I should have done this a while ago. You probably know the captain didn't really keep a lot of stuff on the ship, so I was just letting a lot of it still live around for a while, but I figured it was about time I give it to you. I mean...I don't know who else would..." Sulu trailed off, shrugging sadly at the boxes he was hesitating to set on Spock's desk.

"You can leave them there. Thank you, Sulu."

Spock had proceeded to ignore the objects completely until now.

There were several data and reading PADDs, old-fashioned paper books of an unpredictable variety, oddly fashioned objects Spock could have imagined his mother labeling "knick-knacks." Several of the books had other paper and novelty items tucked between pages. _A People's History of the Galaxy_ sandwiched an old pressed flower; two pages of some forgotten fantasy volume hugged what Spock realized was a wedding invitation Jim's parents had sent to Christopher Pike, long ago.

The first thing that gave Spock's heart a quiet jolt was a glossy sheet tucked into a Kundera paperback: It leaned up out of the pages and the memory was already nudging at him when he suspected he already knew what it was. He opened the book to slide out the narrow strip with its photos separated in panels, that day cracking right open in his mind.

Spock, Jim, McCoy and Nyota had all, by some coercion from the captain, ended up on a particularly Starfleet-centric leisure establishment on the next planet from a Federation outpost; having made no specific plans for the evening, they found themselves spending several colorfully idle hours at a vacationing club that hosted an array of old-fashioned Terran activities.

The four of them were just outside when something Jim quickly realized was a very antique photo booth caught his attention, and in the next moment he and Nyota were skidding onto this common ground of happy insistence that someone just had to use it. Nyota had had some alcohol and was exaggeratedly enthusiastic, and then disappointed that similarly old-fashioned coins were required to operate the mechanism and they would have had to win them by playing some of the video games inside. Nyota took several minutes to explain the overcomplicated traditions of arcades to Spock while McCoy snickered at his questions.

Jim went into the club for a drink and when he returned in some fifteen minutes casually clinking into Nyota's palm a handful of the plastic tokens he had managed to wrangle from several other vacationers, her face fell in a sweet little way and then wrapped to a smile. She was so innocently touched by the gesture that a surprised Jim was the one she took by a looped arm off to the photo booth. Spock and McCoy were left to continue speculating about an upcoming mission and only a minute later the two emerged from the booth, sniggering and almost tripping on each other, Nyota stuffing the photos into Jim's front pocket and returning to Spock's side with a happy hugging of his arm.

While it may have seemed to some onlooker that these actions were as inconsequential to Spock as anyone else, it was something in which he'd harbored an affectionate peripheral interest. He had never quite understood, through most of the first year he served with all of these people, why Jim and Nyota had not seemed capable of becoming friends. He admired many similar qualities in both of them, and had said as much to Nyota on a couple occasions. Even if with regret, she repeatedly dismissed the possibility of having anything more than efficient camaraderie with the captain; it offset something in Spock that he couldn't quite talk about as a significant concern.

It was the fact that over time Nyota had doubtlessly grown to admire Jim as a leader, as a superior, but seemed unable to fully trust him in any other capacity, and unable to help it. Spock had never wanted to pry too much at it; he only expressed his regret over the situation by pointing out that he and McCoy, by contrast, had finally become more amiable.

"Come on, you and the doctor need less help being buddies than either of you would admit," she'd said, and added, "and you two have to do a lot more of the crazy work together. Nothing on the bridge is ever that personal."

But her refusal to entertain the possibility was one day delivered with a more understanding look in her eyes.

When he'd thought the subject had passed because of the softness in her expression, she came out of some reverie, smiled at him and said, "He means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

The concept of photos as valuable souvenirs had always somewhat escaped but also fascinated him, given that they seemed to invite a combination of the contrived and the genuine to one's own history. There was a frustration about the mix of posed falsities and graceless, true, accidental moments that could be captured in a single image. These panels of various pictures of Jim and Nyota were often theatrical, but also real, the brightness in their expressions undeniable and stunning. Jim had dug out his reading glasses from his overnight bag, and they switched from his face to Nyota's in the second picture, in which they were both cross-eyed. In the next picture the glasses were pushed up atop her head while they displayed matching hand signals which must have had some meaning Spock did not recognize.

In the last panel, nothing about Jim was even remotely posed, as it depicted the flushed impulsive action of Nyota crooking him in her direction by an arm around his neck and planting a good-humored kiss on his cheek, and he was caught looking much like she'd looked when he walked up to give her the game tokens only minutes before, just for a second thrown softly off his guard by the unexpected gesture. It was all of this that made the inconsequential little object so meaningful, that it was as if he was able to hold in his hand the very moment when, not mainly for his sake but in his absence, these two important people in his life had begun to care about each other.

Spock's vague projection of his crewmates as they would be now had blossomed into the type of zealous fancy that would amuse Jim, not just out of his smugness but in his way of smirking in surprise whenever Spock displayed any kind of imagination. It was something almost romantic and picaresque: four bodies stealing through some societal underbelly, nudging and reshaping the course of its future as if some steel-belted cosmos could turn its head, transforming, at the mere motion of a kind hello.

In an idealized vision like this, Jim appeared in Spock's mind as something that strengthened somehow with weathering: Some vibrant force under his surface, like the black dangerous heat at the center of a sun, became charged up with a deep and angry virtue at the disturbance. Spock remembered being frankly surprised at the first signs of heroism in that man and he took a proud faith in that contradiction now, just as Nyota always appeared to him too, in her seeming inversion of that type of boldness.

He always imagined her next to him, yielding and warm as ever in the fluid nature of her; but impenetrable, tall and sharp, both changed and unchanging.


	2. Enemy Mine

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chapter 2

**enemy mine**

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The collection of crew members involved with attempting the rescue mission had been uncreatively nicknamed "the Club" throughout the ship. Over time, the line where this group stopped and started became more of a blurred line; a few ensigns were able to help with the basic data organization in their spare hours. There were more people who simply assisted by bringing in food, delivering any information that Spock may want to know about the activity on the rest of the ship, or in some other way showing that they didn't forget that a highly time-consuming extracurricular project was still going on.

Chapel was often at the fringes of the group. When their meetings went far into third shift, she'd show up after getting off work with a pair of sweatpants and a book to read, ready to save anyone a few minutes by going to grab them a drink. For the most part, it was the silent and casual company that was assuring, the fact that certain strings kept the project from feeling entirely separate from the rest of the crew and therefore less tied down by some foolish hope.

The work did well for Sulu. Burdened both by some understated grief and the stress of his new responsibilities, he'd become more irritable after the four had gone missing, and Chekov, worn into a more melancholy reaction during those first few weeks, had spoken to Sulu as if expecting him to lash out at any moment. Even Spock was aware that for some long stretch of days they hadn't spoken to each other at all, as if their sadnesses had vastly different currencies. The two now sat next to each other almost every night, sprawling an arm out to tap a finger at the other's temple when one of them started to look sleepy.

The officers would enter to receive the casual without-looking-up greeting of partners entering each other's living quarters; Sulu or Ensign Manning would lift a PADD with a "Cross-check?" and it would be in Chekov's hand as he swept past on his way back to his chair with an apple carried in his teeth; when Sulu dismissed himself with vague complaints about having to make a shift at four hundred he'd receive a couple voices chorusing, "Goodnight, Sir" and give them an informal smirking salute.

The assistance revolved around about eighteen people, and the much more constant fixtures were Spock, Sulu, and Chekov, with Chapel humming frequently at the edges. After a while the project became most of what Chekov and Sulu talked about even during their free time, the two trying to find some way to condense the permutations or simplify the calculations for the other people in the crew.

They took breaks during their work that consisted of unpredictable conversations: Chapel betting Sulu that Chekov couldn't do a perfect handstand or trading stories about recent shore leaves like the simple entertainment of hearsay was some forgotten gem. On quieter evenings, an ensign would mention something about the missing members, something surprisingly kind McCoy had said, or that time Scotty managed to fix someone's busted tricorder in less than five minutes even though he was blasted on six Rob Roys.

No one talked explicitly of whether they truly believed the work would lead anywhere. The probability that it would was low, but they proceeded with the intent locomotion of gambling addicts, with hope hung lightly over them instead of the cold inertia that had been there right after the disappearance.

In hindsight, it was a waste of time. But there was a fixed rhythm to those evenings they spent around an increasingly familiar crowd, sometimes in the conference room and sometimes moving into the observatory, and it reminded Spock of the smoothly latching routines that had fixed into the bridge crews under Jim's command and which Spock had not yet managed to reawaken on what had now become of the ship. Spock had served with perfectly efficient teams prior to being persuaded to be Jim Kirk's first officer and he had no concerns about the ability of the _Enterprise_'s current crew; Jim had after all selected a great one which he hadn't taken for granted would never need to respond to greater responsibilities one day. However there was still some resonance that Spock knew everyone missed, something that was merely skeletal in its arrangement or like a final chord of music with fingers not quite reaching all of the notes. Spock felt that absence least of all when he was with the others in that small room.

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One morning Sulu gave some short response that made Chekov roll his eyes and huff off to eat breakfast by himself. Sulu and Spock went down on an away mission that day with Lieutenant Loneya, the new senior communications officer. It went without dangerous incident, but it felt exceptionally devoid of enthusiasm. A few hours after they arrived back on the ship, Sulu appeared at Spock's quarters with something to tell him. By that point Spock already knew something was wrong.

"Pavel was concerned about how there don't seem to be any correlations occurring between the exponent of the decreasing variables and the—"

"As was I. What has he found?" Spock interrupted; he wasn't one to often demand the short version, but Sulu got the message.

"He thinks—honestly, it sounds a little crazy, but it does kind of check out—that the other universe's particles behave slightly differently than ours under this kind of pressure stasis, which...makes the equation we currently have a total bust."

Pavel Chekov was one of the few people who had repeatedly managed to not only impress Spock but do it in varied, surprising, almost baffling ways. What Spock had just heard out of Sulu's mouth, casually passed along as if it was merely a request for a schedule change, was an entirely new theory about transdimensional relativism. If it hadn't meant what it did, Spock would have been pulled straight to the point with an intrigued blink in his eyes.

What he did at the time was make himself look steadily back at Sulu for a moment, before finally letting his eyes fall down to his desk in a heavy, slow exhale. "We will proceed with the work as planned, but the others should be told about Chekov's doubts. I will have a talk with him later and see if we can come up with any suggestions. Thank you, Sulu."

"Sir..." Sulu faltered before saying, "I have a suggestion. But I don't think you'll like it."

Spock looked at him expectantly.

He dove right in. "See if any of the counterparts want to help us."

Spock could feel his eyebrow stretching to the ceiling.

"Well, even if we knew where Kirk was...hell no," Sulu said in a scoff, "but Uhura or McCoy? Maybe if we withheld enough of what we know...asked either of them if they know anything about this theory and see if they come up with something that's not in our books. It's damn unlucky we don't know where Scott is, if they're anything like ours he'd be the most help with that kind of thing, but..."

It was with a heavy sort of disbelief, observing the response himself in a dull shock, that Spock looked up from considering his desk and blankly said, "I am going to consider that."

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The _Enterprise_ was due for a Terran shore leave/inspection landing, and Sulu remarked that he'd rather wave it off and stay at work but couldn't really get out of the pressure of going to visit his parents. Over the same conversation, Spock mentioned that he had a number of matters to attend to and would be taking leave; Chekov, who was planning on staying aboard, gave a sardonically sympathetic "Ay-yay-yay" just as he polished off his yogurt.

The infamous rescue operation had already stirred through the gossip lines, which even Spock found to be improbably more reliable than warp speed at times. Media was scrambling at every opportunity to sensationalize, and no doubt scrutinize, their efforts, and Spock was grateful that being planetside on official business made him less of an immediate target than Sulu might be.

His first priority, however, was nothing official.

Come his first morning on Terra, Spock became thoughtfully guarded throughout his shuttle connections, attempting to get some equations untangled while occasionally enjoying the views, until he was in the dry gold atmosphere of Iowa. After what felt like hours of uncertain anticipation, Spock knocked at the front door of the old-fashioned two-story house. It was a few moments, the inhale-exhale of wind fluting in and out of the partly opened sash windows, before Winona Kirk came to the front door.

His visit consisted of what she described as "talking shop," and also of long silences passing naturally in her kitchen while she sipped at her mug of coffee, as if they had shared a thousand mornings before then.

After rinsing out a couple glasses and blindly reaching for something on the windowsill, Winona lightly clapped her hand onto the wood, let out a frustrated sigh.

Spock asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Not exactly...Ever since yesterday I've felt like some things in the house have been moved around. I was on the comm last night meaning to call the police. I ended up comming my therapist instead." She backed away a bit but didn't look at Spock as she answered, as dazed as if she were talking to herself. "Nothing's missing. It's like I did all this cleaning and I don't remember. My head's nowhere these days."

Without saying much about it, only watching, they turned on the transmission of a brief interview someone from the media had managed to get with Sulu. The recording showed him at an outdoor table of some restaurant, looking distracted and as if he was only willing to talk until the arrival of someone he was waiting for.

"Look, I get that people might find it strange, having so much determination to find some people we only worked with for a year, but..." Sulu shook his head, his explanation a little stammered but very certain. "A year in space is a lot longer than a year. I mean, Jim Kirk risked his life to save mine when we hadn't even known each other for an hour, and then it was hardly the first time something like that happened. Life on the _Enterprise_ never slows down, and it's important that everybody looks after each other. This is just another mission gone wrong, as far as I'm concerned. Those four aren't getting left behind if there's anything we can do about it."

Spock looked at Winona. The glow in her eyes was both hopeful and very sad.

Spock allowed himself to wonder for the first time what response his current sort of tenacity would collect from those who weren't around; in some ways the project was plainly foolish, but even as he acknowledged this he considered it still a worthwhile pursuit. Probably Nyota would have shaped his reasons as being part of a noble nature. Jim might have attributed his actions to simple stubbornness, though whether it would be noted with exasperation or with a knowing smile Spock could not be sure.

When Winona was seeing him out later she said, "If you ever need anything. And I mean anything...You make sure you ask?"

"And the same to you, Miss Kirk," he said with a nod.

There was a brief moment when Spock suspected Winona Kirk was going to do something like hug him, but with an uncertain smile she decided against it and said, "Thank you for coming."

After that Spock was back on the transport for a ride which for him could not take long enough, to get to the city in North Carolina where Nyota Uhura was being held.

Spock had hoped they at least had good leverage. Many humans had an ingrained instinct for the value of having a home, and it only seemed natural that most of them, if given the option, would rather return to familiar surroundings and that this would be a suitable motive for cooperating with their captors.

Uhura surprised him. It was enough to make him wonder, not for the first time, if she had been telling the truth when she implied she had often been merely an unwilling accessory in the behavior of her crew. He had no doubt, however, that even if it were the truth, she was only using the truth to bully him into meaningless guilt.

He could not imagine if there had ever been any relationship between her and his own counterpart worth speaking of, if there was any real reason for it, but Uhura took a particular joy in mocking him. She wore Nyota's face and Nyota's name and he could feel in the electric movement of her that she wanted to hurt him. He had no desire to understand it, and a part of him was almost grateful that she gave him nothing but some vague hint of where Scott might be. He left feeling unreasonably exhausted and for a while he took a seat on a bench outside, silently reeling and straying between too many thoughts at once, until his communicator began to beep.

That was when James Kirk got to him.

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At the cafe across from the institution, a server's mouth popped open just slightly at the sight of a very harried-looking Vulcan in a Starfleet uniform, and when Spock said, "I need to use your central communicator and a cross-connector," she was quick on her feet to get it for him.

In a few minutes she was nervously trying to offer him a cup of coffee as he responded quickly to the officer on the end of the comm line with,"Captain Spock requesting senior in communications management. I need an emergency private frequency trace under security code Athena Five-Seven-Eight-Nine; if my personal number is required it's Eleven-Beta-One-"

"We're receiving already, Captain. Trace is in progress, standby for actual."

Spock recognized the specialist who eventually came on as Jacob Mendez, someone he'd had as a student at the academy. "What's going on, Captain?"

"I've just received a birthday greeting from James Kirk."

The gaping most likely happening on the other end was almost audible, and Mendez fell into a very informal "No shit...Well, you know the frequency's bound to be scrambled like hell—"

"Regardless, I want you to send me back the data."

Spock possibly had no idea what he was doing until he had the information in front of him and suddenly realized what he had been thinking all along. The frequency algorithm that distorted the traceability of the location was at first glance extremely irregular, but upon inspection, Spock found the pattern. It was just under twenty-four minutes before Spock was back on the communicator, hanging up on Mendez to make a different contact.

"Domestic security. Please state the nature of the emergency."

"This is Captain Spock, currently of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_. I have located a fugitive."

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The prisoner transport was hanging in Earth's atmosphere as some of the authorities still deliberated about where he would be held. For a small vessel, it maintained an impressive level of security, and Spock suspected that the complicated record-keeping involved with letting in a visitor would take longer than the meeting itself.

He could admit he would not have cared if it was stalled for even longer, but in enough time he was let into one of the ship's twelve cell rooms, past the guard standing at the door which was at a distance of a few yards from the barred chamber in the middle. The room was dark, with dust illuminated into ribbons where the light came in through the slit windows that saw in on a stark white corridor instead of the scenery of space.

Beyond the cell bars, Kirk was doing push-ups.

Spock did not announce himself; he only stopped, holding his hands behind his back in a kind of sardonic imitation of respect, waiting. Kirk finally turned his head, then stopped and pushed himself to his feet in slow, aloof movements that accompanied a slow crack of a smirk.

"Captain Spock of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_," Kirk said, coming right forward and leaning in a shoulder at one of the bars.

James Kirk was noticeably more muscular than Jim ever was; Spock recognized it as a possible side effect of restlessness in prolonged captivity, even though Kirk had been under no one's control for a brief time. However his hair seemed to always have been the way it was now, as Spock did remember it looking much the same when he'd first been aboard the _Enterprise_; it was in most ways the same length and style as Jim's had been, but it sprung up in a wilder mess, as if Kirk was in the habit of agitatedly running his hands through it too often.

For some intangible reason Spock found this the hardest thing to stomach: He didn't quite speak the same way. Something had often twisted with that lazy, jeering edge at Jim's words in a way that Spock had become aware put people off of him quite often. This Kirk's mannerisms were certainly tilted with a sharper swagger of arrogance, but the way he spoke was flatter and much more direct. At the first words he said, Spock already felt a cold shifting in the air, that sensation of prickling at the back of his neck. With Nyota Uhura, her manner of talking had been much the same as his Nyota's; it had been her words that reminded him she wasn't the same woman. With this man the difference was immediate, but some small sense of being around him was much the same. The combined effect suddenly made Spock miss Jim almost more than he could have thought was possible.

"Kirk," Spock said. "We have already established that this meeting must be brief, so I would advise you to quickly state your aim."

"Yeah. Sure," Kirk complied. "I've heard that you and yours have been trying to do some serious breakthroughs in transdimensional science?"

It quickly confirmed Spock's suspicions. "Are you proposing to assist us?"

"I thought you'd be quick."

"That's not a viable option."

"How come?"

"You're set to be tried for the murder of a member of my crew."

"Oh. That." Kirk lazily rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Well, if it's such a sensitive topic, I don't see why you met me here at all..."

Spock was not at all sure how far he himself would be willing to take this. "Perhaps I am willing to propose certain options."

"Like?"

"Some regular communication between our vessel and where you're being held; a promise to let you return to your dimension if you are found to have had innocent motives."

"Nah, I don't think so. I need to be more actively involved. I'll have to be on the ship. If I have to be a prisoner on the ship, whatever."

"You do realize you're hardly in the position to determine the leverage? You're a maximum security threat."

"And helping you is probably my only way out of being imprisoned for the rest of my life. But helping you will be no less than fraudulent if I'm not able to do it in an environment where I can actually _be _helpful. If the project doesn't get anywhere, I don't get anywhere. Do I get maybe five more minutes on this meeting, by the way, for all this fucking around the point?"

"You have yet to demonstrate what it is you will contribute."

"Got a PADD on you?"

Spock hesitated. "It would be better to confirm your intentions in a way that you cannot falsify."

Kirk's shoulders tightened after a second as he gathered what that meant. He backed away a bit to do some pacing. "I don't know about that."

Spock furrowed his brows slightly. "It would only be the most superficial invasion of privacy—"

"Yeah, right. How do I know it's not some sneaky litmus test?"

"If you're incapable of taking me at my word, you don't," Spock said calmly, "but that is your one option."

He turned it over in his mind for a matter of seconds. "Fine. But give me a couple minutes."

The guards shoved Kirk down onto the rickety visiting table across from Spock after letting him out of the cell, strapping a pair of cuffs around his wrists while he chewed petulantly on his bottom lip.

The mind meld took a great amount of discipline. Spock was inflicted with a sense of defensiveness in Kirk's mind which almost managed to obscure his perception of anything else, as if he could not shake the instinct of something lurking dangerously at the edges, about to pounce. Finally, though, the images and calculations came into focus, small bits of history that told a story handsomely enough; Kirk had thought about the fastest possible way to explain it. It was a vague outline, only meant to illustrate that the idea was there, but Spock's curiosity was piqued into it as if drawn to some unique artifact.

Something flickered just at the end, something that made Spock flinch, not just mentally but into a small jolt of physical motion. He almost hesitated in his promise to break the meld before seeing anything he didn't need to. After managing to wrench his mind away, his eyes met Kirk's gasping, agitated discomfort.

Spock foolishly asked. "What was—?"

Kirk shook his head. "I showed you everything you needed. Are we good?"

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Bringing Kirk on board provoked some mild chaos.

Officers who would usually be too humble to approach Spock were putting aside timidness to ask for explanations he wasn't yet able to give, and getting through all the confusion to his quarters was an overlong swim. Sulu was there as he'd requested, and his expression made Spock give a weary tilt of his head.

"The only thing I am giving him is an audience," he assured. "It will be the prerogative of the team, once they have heard what he has to say, whether they believe he can be of help."

"You mean whether they'll be willing to work with a ruthless murderer," Sulu said flatly. "Some people aren't going to give a damn what he knows."

"I am aware," Spock said, shrugging out of his civilian coat. "I will ask for more of your input once the meeting has adjourned."

"...Look, are you sure you're not out of your mind?"

Spock looked over at where Sulu looked to have hesitated mid-stride instead of exiting the room. His hesitation was felt like a long sigh. He answered, "No."

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Kirk was close to five minutes into his explanation when Chekov got confused, at which point everyone else started to look quite worried.

"So you _are_ going to be using an explosive?" The nineteen-year-old was squinting with a pained look at the hand-scribbled mess of data Kirk had distributed around the table.

"No. I mean, sort of. Keep up, children," Kirk mocked as he raked his hands through his hair, refreshing its windblown look. Everything was explained while shifting and pacing, sitting on the table, doing just about anything but sitting in a chair. "This technology: My father used it the day I was born, and he never recreated the results, but I spent years and years working to figure it out and I'm absolutely certain I could do it again even without the notes I had before, with some time. Anyway, it incinerates anything that it's directed on using a kind of, uh...violent ionic rippling that sort of works like going into a transporter beam and never coming out again. But it's dimensional, not just spacial. You shake the hell out of something and it sub-atomically crumbles apart from this brief interaction with what we can just call the 'wall,' because that's pretty much what it is; an actual forceful burst towards the gap that can't actually strip open the gap is basically like crushing something under huge amounts of force. It's just nice and quiet."

"And you're going to use this as a form of transport," Sulu said, "..._how_?"

"Okay, look, the reason we can't hitch into my universe from any old ionic interference is because there is a very particular way that the matter has to be different somehow. It's like, particles within particles that we even know about, it's theoretical, but all the testing seemed to suggest basically that our matter doesn't like your matter; and it really takes some very strong common thread, like the identical away teams, that kinda thing, for the collision to even be possible, because once stuff gets jostled up, it pops back into its own dimension."

"A technology operating off of the mere theory of alternate dimensional parallelism, requiring no extended contact with the universe." Spock knew he probably sounded impressed. "And assuming the binary theory of our dimensions, something like the model of matter versus antimatter."

"Exactly like that."

Sulu slowly prodded, "So, how do you plan on cheating the parallel?"

"That's the thing. We don't have to, because it's already been cheated." Kirk had a slight crooked grin, and the amount of engaged enthusiasm made Spock believe for the first time that he could be more or less tranquilized with intellectual activity, even while that impatient air was still present. "The whole adhesion doesn't just work on an extremely small level, it works on a very, very _big_ plane. These interferences have probably happened before, but relatively speaking, they almost never happen; universes are very good at staying their own universes, they've been at it a long time. And when something throws off the scale, when something leaks in and stays in the wrong place, it's like there's this force that wants to push back. So, if we make a big enough ka-boom, and we create a vessel equipped with the right kind of dampening field—I'll get to that later—that can get us to ride right through it, given that they're all there, and I'm here—"

"The four of them would be pulling us," Spock finished, knowing that this was slightly misleading paraphrase but somehow liking the elegance of it. "They are the imbalance."

"And the whole plane here would be pushing at me...Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Though of course since I'm going through with you, the initial journey will take a lot of test work to make sure we don't just bounce right back."

"And this is all...theoretical," Chekov said. Kirk ignored him, so then he asked, "Assuming this all works, you would have to bring as few members of this crew as possible in order to not disrupt the pull, yes?"

"Well, one is enough of a risk."

"You expect the captain to go on a rescue mission by himself? Just with you?"

Sulu had just caught Spock's eye and saved him by clearing his throat. "That would be up to the captain, and anyway we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, if we even do."

Chekov received the look from Sulu that made him raise an eyebrow, then change the subject slightly. "So if it is essentially creating a _new_ ion storm, there would be a matter of limited time before the hole repairs itself?"

"Yes," Spock answered. "The return trajectory will be open for longer than it was for the storm that gave us contact with the universe before. We are most likely planning for a matter of weeks, but we cannot predict anything more specific than that."

"So if he doesn't find them," Kirk flippantly added, "he'll have to haul ass right back or get stranded himself."

Chekov made an overwhelmed little clicking with his tongue. Sulu asked, "What kind of machinery are we looking at?"

Spock said, "The project will require implementing as small a vessel as possible, something probably only marginally larger than an escape pod. Kirk has told me that over 60 percent of the work will involve designing and building the dampening field, as no existing hardware provides a shield with such particular parameters."

The first officer tapped his stylus against the table. "So if we do this...How much work does this add up to?"

"Considering the necessary procurement of materials, the time of voluntary labor, additional calculations and testing," Spock said, "the completion of the device could take at minimum eight months, at maximum nearly two years."

A couple small sounds of astonishment dropped around the room. In the moment of pause, Spock decided to have the security team escort Kirk out of the room and wait in the corridor. James gave a somewhat lascivious expression to the woman who put his cuffs back on; she led him out with a stiff jerk, and Spock made one of a few mental notes to himself.

Once he had left, Sulu's expression lightened a little, as if he was resigned to the dark humor of the situation. "So, when the captain gets back...no one better ever tell him that asshole just might be smarter than he is."

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Spock caught up with the security team and volunteered to escort Kirk back to the brig.

On the turbolift he was saying, "You are on this ship solely to provide your services to assist in the creation of a transdimensional device. If I ever come to believe that you are idling in your efforts to help us, I will no longer be willing to provide you amnesty and you will be sent to a holding facility where the Federation will handle you in whatever way they deem appropriate."

"Yeah, yeah—"

"This applies if I was to ever come to believe that you are withholding information that would be helpful to our pursuits," Spock continued. "At any time that you are not under my supervision, your behavior will be constantly monitored by members of security personnel, so be vigilant, Kirk, in your self-control. If you stray into the wrong corridor and my security team does not know exactly where you are, you will be considered a threat and removed from the ship. If you commit any act of violence while on board, I will, again, sacrifice you to the authorities."

Kirk pulled down the zipper of his drab gray jumpsuit a few inches, yawning.

"One other thing," Spock said almost casually. "If I ever come to know that you have made anything resembling even an ambiguous sexual advance at any member of this crew—regardless of their rank, race, sex, or—"

"Does that include you?" Kirk interrupted. When that was met with no hint of amusement, he held up his hands. "I just want to clarify my boundaries here."

"I think the term 'boundaries' strays too close to implying negotiable parameters..."

"Whatever, I get it. I bat an eyelash and I go back to the brass."

"I had not finished. For all you know I may consider the airlock in that instance."

"So touchy," he sang to the ceiling. Then he began, after a moment, to whistle something.

The turbolift seemed to take longer to get to the brig level than anywhere else. Spock found himself wanting to fill the space with any kind of valuable information he could gather, but the first question he thought to interrupt with was, "I understand your father is alive?"

Kirk gave him a bored expression. "Unfortunately, yeah."

Spock ignored his gut response to that callousness. "He wasn't an inspiring figure to you."

"Only competitively. He sure as hell wasn't the reason I got tagged for the fleet."

"What do you mean?"

"I wound up wanted and convicted a couple years after I left school. They give you the option of serving your time in the military, or at least Pike was able to swing it that way when he liked the idea of having me in his debt...I figured rising to the rank of captain in a handful of years was a good enough 'Fuck you' to that," he finished explaining with a cocky raise of his brows.

"Did that happen when you were involved with a second encounter with Nero?"

"Yeah. So?"

Spock hesitated. "Did this encounter involve a singularity connected to a future version of your universe?"

"I tell you, that red matter time travel tango shit is not my style. What a mess, right? Ambassador You..." He stopped to give a vaguely mocking hand motion at Spock, "had to convince me to rise up in the ranks instead of fleeing the service right after the younger version of him marooned me on an ice rock...The dick. Me actually deciding to listen to the granddaddy version was the only good thing that came of that, though to this day I'm not sure why I listened."

After considering this, Spock asked, "Did he have anything else to say to you?"

"Yeah. He was one creepy old bastard," Kirk muttered. His tone became slightly more grim when he recounted, "I'd only met Spock that day of course...We were line-stepping all over each other even then. And then his counterpart told me that, depending on the type of man I chose to be, I would either be the closest man to Spock, or I would be his 'most bitter adversary.' His words."

"...And which did you turn out to be?" Spock asked at length.

"Oh..." Kirk grunted, a mix of rueful and amused as he recalled, "I knew even then that it was always gonna be both."

The turbolift doors opened before Spock could think what to ask in response to that; he continued showing him back to the brig in vaguely troubled silence.


	3. Wish You Were Here

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chapter 3

**wish you were here**

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"Not to deny the value of your support," Spock said, "but how can you be 'on my side' if you do not believe that what I'm doing is advisable?"

One side of Chapel's mouth quirked as she looked from side to side for a chair to pull up. He quickly pushed the smaller desk chair out from behind the table and she took it, settling across from him. "You're hiding in here eating dinner all by yourself and you wanna act like you're not aware that a lot of the crew is pissed off at you?"

He set his eyes on hers briefly, then said to his soup, "I am not hiding."

"Mm-hmm."

He attempted to give her more of a warning glance, but it lasted briefly before he obligingly offered her one of his oranges.

"Thanks." Only when she was almost done peeling off the skin did she look at him seriously again. "How many transfer requests have you gotten since you brought Kirk on board?"

He could have told her that information wasn't open to anyone who simply asked, given the occasionally delicate nature of transfers. He admitted, "Nine."

Her movements paused. "Whoa."

"Indeed."

She spoke with an incredulous scoff under the surface. "Sorry...I don't know much about these things, but that seems like a big number."

"I can assure you that it is," Spock said with affected mildness.

"Like bad enough that it could reflect badly on you."

"It is not that it could. It is that it will, particularly in consideration of the fact that I will likely approve every transfer. I believe that the ship is still safe with James Kirk on board, now that we know to be exceptionally vigilant. But if others do not agree, that is their right."

Chapel's teeth were working at her lip; Spock was reminded of her old shyness. After a moment she said, "I wanted to tell you that I'm withdrawing mine."

His eyes worked over her in puzzlement.

"My transfer request." She shrugged. "Consider it a vote of confidence."

After a moment of silence, Spock reached for the orange he'd left for himself and began systematically to peel it.

She tossed a wedge of the fruit into her mouth, smiling and mumbling around it, "Stop your floundering, Captain, a thanks would be fine."

He nodded. "Thank you."

Later when they were both walking through the corridor to the turbolift, she said, "But seriously, how careful are we being? This isn't my area, but..."

"There is no need to be apologetic. The entire crew is entitled to know what kind of restrictions are being placed on Kirk. Those who don't already know will eventually be told that he is being held to a very strict allowance of behavior; if he violates any of his restrictions even once, he'll be handled as a severe security threat and the project will cease to have any priority."

"So let me get this straight," Chapel slowly said. "Basically the most important factor in the success of the rescue mission is whether or not that man can be on his best behavior?"

He did not miss, or disagree with, the apparent incredulity in her question. All he could do was nod in confirmation before she turned to catch a lift that was headed to the medical floor.

"Hey. Lunch tomorrow," she insisted just before the turbolift door sealed after her.

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Eight days after his arrival on board, Kirk was late to one of the meetings that needed him in attendance to be even remotely productive. Spock cocked an irritated eyebrow which was met with a nervous smile from Chekov, who himself had worked the night shift on the bridge and looked rather rushed-in. Spock tapped the comm system and addressed, "Lieutenant Briani, why has Kirk not yet been escorted to the lab?"

An uncomfortable clearing of the throat came through from the brig comm system, followed by Briani's voice. "We're having a dilemma with Kirk, sir?"

"Kirk is aware of the consequences if he is refusing to leave his cell."

"To be fair, Captain, he isn't actually refusing to leave..."

"Then what is the problem?"

Several minutes later Spock was walking down to the brig room. He passed two members of security who seemed to be in assorted states of embarrassment and promptly walked over to face the one occupied cell.

"Mr. Kirk," he said. "Explain why you have removed your clothing."

He was indolently pacing back and forth with no hint of self-consciousness, entirely in the nude. Spock noticed and then discarded of the fact that he had a tattoo spread across one side of his ribcage, the shape too faint to be made out in the dark of the cell.

Kirk was giving him a whining expression. "That jumpsuit thing is fuckin' itchy."

"You will put it back on or you will not leave your cell today."

This was answered with a small complaining grunt; Spock didn't wait for a clearer confirmation.

"If I am forced to attend to you in such a manner again, I will not be pleased." On the way out of the brig he said to no one specifically, "Have him in the lab as soon as possible."

All of the unique factors considered, the collaboration was going well. Kirk's personality clashed with the professional atmosphere about as much as possible without it being particularly against any policies, but Spock was grateful for the cooperative efforts everyone made to put aside their discomfort with the situation.

Furthermore, Kirk was nothing less than ingenious in his ability to organize ways to make even a lower-ranked officer able to help with testing his calculations. He would have been illogically offended to have it pointed out to him, but he made an excellent, albeit unkind and condescending, instructor. The potential for the project to advance far too slowly no longer plagued Spock's mind; even if the volunteers working on the rescue mission had to momentarily pretend Kirk was the same as their former captain for the sake of personal principles, they were more capable of working well with him than they themselves may have guessed. Still, there was some apparent relief that the plans were to begin an early start on the pod vessel as soon as possible, that being a physical labor many of them could contribute to without Kirk's direct instruction.

It was nearing the time that Spock would have to report to the bridge when he gestured aside Yeoman Feda on his way out of the room. "At your earliest convenience, if you could acquire some reasonably comfortable civilian clothes for Mr. Kirk..."

Kirk quickly looked up and then cracked a sneer, but not before Spock caught the widening of his eyes that gave away a more innocent surprise.

Feda cleared his throat, looking between them. "Uh, parameters? Any particular color?"

"I was thinking light purple," Kirk pondered dramatically, leaning back in his chair. "Maybe a nice seersucker fabric—"

"Black will suffice," Spock interrupted, looking at Feda, who nodded and left. "James, you are done for the day."

The realization nudged at Spock, after Kirk was led back to the brig area, that he had stopped referring to the man by his last name. It was understandably more comfortable, as the former captain had never gone by the full form of his first name. Spock also reasoned that it held a less overly respectful air; given Kirk's consistently petulant behavior, it almost came naturally to address him as one could a minor.

That was the explanation he offered to anyone else who found it strange, and even Sulu quickly accepted the odd rapport as it sparked uncomfortably between James and the captain. Spock responded to it out of necessity, knowing that for whatever reason he had become Kirk's unofficial handler and that James was reportedly more obedient in his presence. In one way or another, they were becoming used to each other.

Months passed.

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It was partly at Sulu's subtle but fervent urging that Spock took a purely recreational shore leave on a small but flashy Federation base where the _Enterprise_ was docked for just under a day. He was persuaded by the fact that the "club" was gathering for a party of sorts in a bar where he was told his presence would be symbolically appreciated, though once he was among the drinking and swinging hips in the dim light, he hardly understood how there could be any necessity for his company.

Chapel was there and seemed grateful for his conversation once she tiredly took a seat at the tables. He had found himself a section of the bar that was isolated enough for studying, and at first she only sat nursing a cocktail while smirking at the fact that he was going over some messages about an upcoming away mission. Later on the rumbling bass over the speaker was changed to a quieter variety of what Spock recognized non-specifically as some old Terran music.

"You never told me about visiting Uhura," Chapel remarked after a while.

He looked up at her. "That was quite some time ago."

"Yeah, but it all got swept up under this stuff with Kirk after that." She read his hesitation, though, and asked, "Is there anything to tell? What was she like?"

He tilted his head fractionally. "I don't believe she is going to be rehabilitated in any way. Her attitude suggests that she is resistant to truly joining our world, but not because she is afraid of it. She seems altogether apathetic about whatever society surrounds her."

"That had to be hard," she eventually muttered. "Talking to her."

Spock did not bother to confirm it. After a moment of consideration he replied, "I found myself interchangeably hoping that she would do or say something recognizable, and then dreading that she actually would."

Chapel only frowned in understanding.

Chekov was swaying wistfully in his seat across the room, a couple people chuckling loudly at his drunkenness as he allowed Sulu to pull him out of his seat and do a campy ballroom dance. There was sniggering when they accidentally knocked over a glass. Chapel was smirking slightly when Spock looked back from them to her.

Later he would not remember what possessed him to say yes. Christine stood and took him lightly by the arm. They danced to a slower song that instantaneously had the bar hushed to a calmer tone.

Reminding him of her clinical manners, she took care to position herself against him chastely enough, avoiding contact with his hands. Possibly she did not want the action to be mistaken for any sort of flirtation, but he knew it wasn't, especially not when they began to talk.

"I have never understood the logic of this form of dance."

"It's not really a 'form of dance,' Captain."

"Dance traditionally has some more artful purpose, but when it is improvised, or is simply moving in place as we are doing..."

She let out a small laugh. "You really can be a bore. Sometimes improvisation is the point."

Spock felt hesitant to point out, "I understand courtship is occasionally the purpose."

Her eyes moved up to meet his and then back down to the bobbing space between them. After a long moment, she spoke quietly. "When I was a teenager I volunteered at a center for the elderly...I think you mentioned it being in my records, actually. Anyway, one of the things they urged us to do when we spent time with the patients was to be sure to touch them every once in a while, even if it was just on the shoulder for little moments at a time...You don't really think about it, but when people get old or when they don't have many people in their lives, hardly anybody ever touches them. Most people who aren't so alone, they don't even think about what that must be like."

Spock felt an uncertainty that made him unable to look directly at her; he had avoidantly pulled her just enough closer so that his chin was resting at her forehead. Gently pedantic, he said after a minute, "It would certainly be different for those from cultures that rarely encourage physical contact."

"Of course," she said patiently. He thought he heard her take in the air to say something more, but then she was quiet.

They danced through the rest of the song in silence. Spock did not deny to himself at least that he was having one of many recent moments of weakness, but it was a quieter lack of emotional control; he felt simultaneously comforted and somehow achingly vacant. The tone of the music was limping its own dance across the floor in little summons of nostalgia. He found himself confirming that he was adrift, that he was desperate, that he was unable to recall the particular scent of Nyota's hair.

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1 YEAR.

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The performance evaluation was met with not only one but several admirals, as was customary when the reports received from the flagship were far less than ideal, and the _Enterprise_'s had been for a while. Spock reported to a round echoing room where the officials scrutinized everything from the disciplinary records to the number of scheduled repairs related to the vessel; he stood and coolly defended the status of the crew in every way he supposed Jim might have done. No one specifically mentioned the controversial presence of James Kirk aboard the ship, but every lingering look of vague disapproval was pregnant with it, even if it was a quieter displeasure that Spock saw in the expression of Christopher Pike.

That particular admiral arranged to see Spock alone in his temporary quarters.

"So are you imagining it's a coincidence that I'm all the way out here?" Pike asked, currently pressing a drink to his temple as if to ebb away a headache.

"I presume you mean that you've taken it upon yourself to attempt some kind of partiality towards my authority over the _Enterprise_."

"Partiality. That sounds like something you wouldn't approve of."

"Generally, no."

"But in this case."

"In this case, no," Spock clarified tersely.

"You know I'm the one who pulled that little campaign to let you shuffle your crew around rather than send in replacements from the first month we were dealing with this mess. It's almost unheard-of for a first officer to permanently resume captaincy after the captain's death or in this type of situation."

"How many situations exactly like this one have you witnessed in Starfleet?"

"Don't be a smartass."

"Is there a regulation for such a displacement of a senior officer rather than definite death or disappearance?"

"It's the _same thing_ as a disappearance, Spock."

"When we handle disappearances it is a matter of more urgency because the members are likely to be dead," Spock said a little slowly. "We have little reason to believe these four individuals are dead."

Pike looked at him for a long time, with a face that was too tired to look defeated, and said what he seemed to have been trying to say all along. "Your record's not good, and I'll tell you why: You are without doubt the finest science officer I've ever seen or heard of and you make a damn good first, but you are not captain material, Spock. I knew that even when I made you acting captain; if only I'd been insane enough to put you over Kirk's shoulder from the get-go. Only the problem then was that you were so by-the-book you couldn't see around the next asteroid. Your problem now is that you're not going by any book at all but you think you still are."

Spock frowned at an ice cube that settled lower in the glass when Pike set it down. "I don't understand."

Pike let out a sigh, piecing it together in a different order in his head. "You've been doing what you're doing because you want to do it, Spock. Which isn't the end of the damn world, but if you start pretending otherwise, that's when you're playing with fire."

"As I have said repeatedly," Spock said, feeling an irritated jut in his body, "the rescue mission is not interfering with any assigned missions and has a considerable chance of success."

"You took a man very likely to be a killer away from trial so that you could get your friends back," Pike summarized, an unkind impatience setting into him. "And I will not be partly responsible for it ending in disaster, so you need to listen to me. I'm giving you the warning that was not made explicit in that meeting because a lot of people in my position would rather stand back and wait for you to fail: You are on thin ice. You just barely made it away from this evaluation still the commanding officer of the _Enterprise_. If you don't keep your records spotless for the next year...hell, you know what's gonna happen, but what really matters to you is that you will no longer have any say in what happens to James Kirk, and the project drowns without him, right?"

Spock almost said something, then only nodded.

"So I don't know what you need to do, but if you don't pay attention to virtually everything that's happening on that ship, you could lose it. And if you can't pursue this nutjob idea and be a captain at once, it's time to cut losses."

The comment cut right into an angry part of Spock. He felt a tight surge of simple betrayal, and it showed plainly enough that Pike cut him off.

"Don't you dare try to dissect the way that I've handled this, not you," he barked. "I have seen more than enough get buried to know why it is you can't give up on this. You think I've just accepted that they got killed? That I don't wonder where they are? I don't _know_ if I think this whole plan could work and I don't even want to know how dangerous it is, but I've done everything I can to keep you on that ship and it's because I did not pull George Kirk's son into Starfleet so that he could get sucked into some freak limbo, and if helping you can make me somehow convey to Winona how sorry I am about this whole fucked-up joke, it's what I'm gonna do."

Spock looked down for a moment, and he did not try to think of anything to say.

Pike finally sat back heavily, his expression almost apologetic. After a while he muttered, "Get back to your crew."

For over half of the shipmates their current stop was a brief leave, and many of them were wandering the temperate area with no care for procedural concerns. Spock was entertaining the idea of allowing himself to digest the events of the past two hours by taking a walk and observing the simulated sundown on the rec beach when he received the communication.

"Something happened," Sulu said. "It's not good."

Back on board, the ship felt skeletal with the number of lights that were automatically dimmed with not enough motion to indicate any necessity for them. As he approached the point of the ship where Sulu said he'd be, he heard an echo of not quite loud but strained dialogue between him and Chekov who was idly standing by. At Spock's approach Chekov took a cue to respectfully un-involve himself while Sulu turned to him; from the looks on their faces, Spock mentally braced himself for the news.

"Kirk got out of his cell somehow. Veralis and Donnelly found him messing around somewhere in engineering."

Spock's head managed some acrobatic stunt of rational balance. "Are you positive there isn't some mistake?"

"How could there be? All of his usual handlers are all on shore leave. Nobody else wants to touch him, and why would they let him out in the first place?"

"I assume there was some effort to see how he escaped?"

"Veralis already checked his cage. No sign of force or damage; he must have found some way to hack an exit code at some point when he was out working."

"James never has access to the computer system when—"

"I know. I know, but what else can we assume? He's not going to humor us with any kind of explanation, that's for sure."

Spock thought for a moment. "Why would he do this?"

"He knew there weren't many people on board. He was restless, decided to take a walk and thought he wouldn't get caught." Sulu spoke with the terseness of the furious; he didn't seem able to look Spock in the eye, as if it would be too blinding to bounce off of anyone else's reaction to this.

"Where is he now?"

"In there."

It took Spock a moment to realize that when Sulu pointed down the corridor he was indicating one of the smaller airlock compartments. This was a smart enough holding place; security would be awaiting orders on where to relocate Kirk, as there was no logic in escorting him back to a cell he had already managed to escape from. That clinical line of thinking was the last before he realized he had no idea what he was going to do next. In a couple seconds he was already marching up to the hatch, pressing the button to enter the room.

The very sight of Kirk abruptly made him feel like his bones were seething. "Leave us," he told the three officers who were standing by him, weeding the command down to a blunter "Out" when there was a slightly stunned hesitation.

Kirk's face was colored with a large bruise; it was no surprise that he had been resistant to security. However, nonsensically, he looked almost as angry as Sulu had looked. Spock heard the hatch seal behind them.

"Explain to me why you did this," Spock demanded.

A hesitation, Kirk's eyes darting away from Spock's face to the floor before meeting them with a pathetic fraction of their usual defiance. "I don't know."

Spock glared.

"I don't_ know_, alright. I got crazy, I was feeling restless." It sounded like some defeated plea for Spock to come to his own conclusions. "I didn't fuck up anything on the ship—"

"No, what you have—" Spock took in a breath, "—'fucked up' is our entire mission. Are you going to tell me you have not just done so deliberately? Was all of this what you intended from the beginning, only to delay your prison time?"

Kirk took a few steps back, his defeated sulk charging hotter.

Spock almost couldn't dare to ask, but it had to be asked, now that he was forced to coldly contemplate the facts. Kirk had been taking somewhat longer than he'd anticipated to be able to confidently state he could make the dimensional device operate on a bigger scale than the science department's testing fields; Spock had not monitored the progress closely enough, he feared. "Do you even believe that the execution of the project is possible?"

"Of course it's possible!" Kirk flung back as if he'd been profoundly offended. "You have got the wrong idea, man! This was just one fucking mistake."

"You know fully well you can only make one."

Kirk was just now registering the punch, and he was almost shrill when he exclaimed, "What, you're just dropping this!? You know you can't make this work without me, Spock, if you want to get them back—"

"I want it more than you can comprehend, but I also must look after the rest of this crew. They do not feel safe with you on this ship, which is why I offered you a place aboard only under strict conditions, two of which you have managed to violate in one evening. We are done, Kirk."

It took Spock completely by surprise: A growling gravity of some emotion came over Kirk. His tone was flat and controlled but there was a shade of desperation. He could not allow himself his own resigned silence. "What can I do?"

"No, James." Spock gave a shake of his head, would not look at him. "There is nothing."

"Fucking..._dammit_, I barely even did anything." Kirk looked around as if he was looking to kick something, and he turned back to Spock crazed with anger. "And now you're making me out to be a goddamn liar, you pompous...half-nape piece of—"

"How preposterous of me," Spock said with unusually dauntless sarcasm. "To presume a murderer would be capable of lying."

"You don't even know for sure if I killed your crew member—!"

"You killed a number of people in the process of escaping from prison."

"Other prisoners; other killers. What's it to you? You think anybody on this ship would give a single fuck if you strangled me right here and walked out?! You gonna tell me your precious old captain never offed anybody because he had to make that call—?"

The interruption was snapped low: "You do not know what, or who, you are talking about."

"Well, you don't know who I am so you can kindly get fucked, Spock. I'm done letting you wipe the floor with me if you're not going to give me another chance."

James was truly and honestly asking for his trust. For the moment Spock understood the proverbial exaggeration about conversations being able to make people dizzy. "Even if I wanted to do that, I could not."

James perked up his eyes. "Is that really a hundred percent true?" he said, expression dubious. "...Come on, is it?"

"I would face losing the trust of my crew."

"It's not gonna be your crew much longer if the mission goes as planned."

"It will always be my crew, James. This is more than a matter of command politics."

"Assuming that I've been lying to you this whole time," he slowly said, "how could I have shown you the preliminary plans in the mind meld without you picking up that something was off?"

It was a clever question, but Spock gave it an expression of doubt. "If you had some knowledge about mind melds, you could have trained yourself to study the plans thoroughly enough that they did not register as some instrument of deception."

James rolled his eyes at that. Spock considered for a moment.

"If you consented to another meld..."

"No. No, I don't think so."

Spock lifted an eyebrow, his agitation rising again.

"I don't want you poking around in there, no way."

Spock examined James for a long moment. "Why?"

He refused to answer for a moment, and then all he had to say was, "I wouldn't have taken you for a pushy date."

In hindsight, Spock was surprised it had taken him this long to understand that James made tasteless jokes as a means of pushing untouchable matters aside. He squinted across the room at him for another few seconds, and then the recollection flooded in. "The one time I melded with you, there was something I nearly saw at the end of it that you were extremely uncomfortable with."

That was met with a bland pout. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The feeling of it was deeply regretful."

James shrugged coldly. "You're making it up. You misinterpreted something. I don't know."

"If I am fabricating this, then what is your reason for being so apprehensive?"

"So it's a trade-off, is this what you're saying? I gotta do this for you to even try to go to bat for me? Because it's still not gonna happen."

"Be reasonable," he said. "What do you stand to lose from it? It would certainly be less than your freedom, James."

Kirk's eyes were darting about his surroundings again, and Spock realized with a small shock what he may have been thinking but not giving away his cards by replying: _As if I'd tell you this while I'm standing in an airlock_. A black murky curiosity was now surging through Spock; somehow this was no longer just about what had happened that evening.

Kirk was gathering a couple wits together, perhaps realizing the logic of Spock's question. He finally delivered an icy smirk. "You know what? If you're so convinced this thing is skulking around the corners of my head, let's see what you got. If you find it, you can have it." He tapped at his temple with one finger.

Spock shook his head, more in disbelief than refusal. He insisted, "You know what it is. You could simply tell me."

But Kirk shook his head back at him and repeated, "If you find it, you can have it."

Spock only wasted time hesitating for a couple seconds, but the moment when he stepped forward hitched up the air as if some threat had just been made, Kirk's bravado dissolving as he appeared to want to step back before clenching his fists at his sides. In the end he merely propped his hand to the wall he was close to. As abruptly as a punch or a kiss or an embrace, Spock stopped in front of him and placed his fingers at his temple.

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Spock was sitting against the back wall of the transporter pad and he was alone.

He remembered well over a year ago when he had felt the first taste of his emotions spinning wildly out of control, when he'd walked with the tingling fade of his rage to this room to simply stare at the circle guides on the transporter floor, willing them to somehow belatedly produce his mother from some imagined ether.

Nyota had once translated a proverb for him: "To recover from grief is to make the world vow to you that it will never wound you in that way again. It will break its promise. You will believe the promise again."

For the moment he was grateful that there were so little people on the ship, as he wasn't sure how he might feel if someone caught him in such an apparently melancholy state as dwelling in the transporter room. There were already a couple members of security who would be grimly curious about what had just transpired, but none of them had asked.

After Spock had found that guarded thing, he'd cut himself clean out of Kirk's mind like pulling a hand from something white-hot. It had taken a staggering level of effort to do nothing more than throw him into the wall by a grasp at his shirt collar, perhaps shoving him out of his space in order to avoid his shaking temper getting the best of him. Spock had abruptly left, only curtly explaining that Kirk would not be dropped from their custody at this point in time because he was not satisfied with the probable amount of effective security on the closest fleet base.

He'd intended to go to his quarters and meditate for the rest of the evening. Instead he had found himself here.

The door slid open; Spock was surprised but somewhat relieved that it was Chapel. Her hair was done up in a more complicated way than usual, but the rest of her was in sweats.

With anyone else, Spock might have immediately assumed some formality in order to distance himself from his present state, but all he could manage was, "I thought you had taken leave."

"I just caught the last shuttle. I got stood up by this guy and I was in a bad mood, so I was only going to head straight to bed, but..." She gave an overwhelmed expression with her hands, indicating she'd heard a few things. "I'm thinking your night was a lot worse than mine."

His eyes looked forward tiredly. After a second she walked over to the pad and up the steps, taking a seat just next to him.

"I have just found out something about him," Spock angled hesitantly. "If I had known it from the start, I would not have let him on this ship."

"The problem isn't that he escaped his cell?"

"That is the problem for the rest of the crew. What I have just learned is the problem for me."

She considered for a moment. "Is it anything he's done to us?"

"No. This was not committed in our universe."

"Well, you need to let it go then." He must have looked rather surprised by that. She said, "I'm not telling you to say it doesn't matter, no. But if we were willing to let him roam free as long as it wasn't in our world, we chose to exile him, not control him or punish him. And you've got to accept that how good or bad he is has nothing to do with us because it isn't your responsibility...And that you can't exactly begrudge or forgive him because none of it is yours to forgive."

Spock looked over slowly, his eyes searching hers. "What has led you to believe that I would want to give him any kind of pardon?..."

She shrugged, unwavering in her point. "You wouldn't be so ticked off right now if you hadn't let yourself believe that there was some kind of hope for him. And I get it, I really do. He's just enough like Jim for it to be like walking on glass just to look at him; I wasn't even close to the captain and I hate it. But...I don't know if you want to hear this from me right now."

"I welcome your honesty."

She let out a sigh of hesitation first. "I think somebody needs to tell you that your authority will be _seriously_ damaged if the reason we're leaving this base with Kirk is because you're thinking about letting him stay."

"I am not."

"Just listen. If you actually let this slide, the majority of the crew will be confused, or they'll be annoyed, because they don't know you well at all. But the rest of them...the ones who know how much you probably miss Jim? They're going to think that you've been taken in. That he's somehow charmed you into believing he's not that bad, that he's hitting all your weaknesses and he's got you eating out of his hand."

It was a brief moment before he spoke a bit heavily. "You are informing me that there are people among this crew who believe that I am friends with James."

She looked away with a slight grimace. Now that it was directly expressed, Spock felt that he'd overlooked what was obviously too enshrouded from the majority of the crew to not be heavily speculated upon: The hours that Kirk spent with Spock, occasionally alone as they'd been contributing a lot of work to the pod vessel late into the night for lack of anything more useful to do, could be mistaken as almost companionable.

"In the future when you are aware of this kind of problem, I would appreciate if you would tell me sooner, even if it is not strictly your duty to do so." She had her mouth hanging slightly open in an unworded uncomfortable protest. As if reading her mind, he said, "It would not be an imposition. I consider you a valuable friend."

Her eyes met his in a snap, then looked away, as she struggled to reply.

"In fact," he realized, "at present, you are in some ways my only friend."

She sighed and after a second her face seemed to battle between a frown and a sad smile. "Same with me, actually."

He blinked in consideration. "I find that difficult to believe."

"I almost tried to tell you before when I put in for the transfer...I wasn't trying to meet anybody for the longest time on this ship. The main reason I enlisted for space travel was because I had figured that my relationship was doomed to fail and I thought that putting several planets between us would make for something prettier to blame it on than the fact I barely recognized who he was anymore..." She shook her head slowly. "Then one day I get the message that Roger's dead and it's like the entire damn solar system out the window is the carpet getting yanked out from under me. But then, Uhura...that aloof Uhura who goes by her last name even with some of her friends..." She paused to laugh. "She told me to come by if I needed a shoulder, and that was that. But now that she's gone..."

The pause cracked in the air.

"I've never been good at picking up on what makes me happy. Not only did I barely register that she was my best friend, but I guess I always took for granted that if something like this happened I'd show up at Leonard's office and get us both drunk until he could think of something helpful enough to say. But he's not here either."

Her voice was laced with the bitter redundancy of that last statement, which he blandly parodied with, "I had not noticed his absence, though I did wonder how the performance of the medical crew had so abruptly improved."

Christine laughed, in one little bright note. And then she started to cry.

For a matter of seconds she attempted to hide it and Spock made no motions. But then he lifted his arm in a subtle invitation, and she tilted in to rest her head into the crook of his shoulder, her legs drawing up so that she looked smaller; he was reminded of what he had observed before in the simple language of consolation among human children. She was mumbling, "I felt like we were so close, you know...that we'd actually get them back. I don't know if we could have done it, but dammit..."

Finally Spock soldiered himself into an attempt at consolation. "The loss of something is not directly a punishment for failing to realize its value."

"Not really," she muttered. "But it can sure as hell feel like it."

An announcement came over the general comm, somebody in engineering requesting an ensign. The ship still felt cloudy and vacant.

"Can I ask you something?" Christine said.

"If you wish."

"What was the actual status of your relationship?" Her voice had dropped, as if they were in the mess hall talking about something delicate rather than alone. "You know, you and Nyota. I think to some people it was obvious, but I remember getting the impression it was this on-again-off-again thing. Like, one or both of you would cut it off because it was a bad idea, but then some intense high-risk mission would come along and you'd just forget about all that."

For a long moment it may have seemed like he was never going to answer, as deeply thoughtful as he was. He finally said, "It was never what you might call official, at least not for any long period. Yet it never seemed to be over. We knew and trusted that we cared deeply for one another. That was what could be said for our relationship and in many ways it was enough. Though naturally I was raised to be more accustomed to very formal parameters in courtship and I was never fully comfortable with the uncertainty of it."

He paused to simply remember it, remember her. Christine was breathing next to him more peacefully now.

"I suppose that was the reason I asked her to marry me."

Christine sat up. "...When?"

"It was six days before the away mission. She had not yet given me her answer."

"...Oh my god." She seemed to school her mouth against hanging open before simply putting her hand over it for a second. "Spock. Oh my god."

"It was an unfitting way I had chosen to express something it had been fitting to confess, and it was not the best time, but I cannot say I regret having asked now."

Another moment passed as she shook her head. Eventually Christine asked in a careful way, "You still feel the same way? After all this time?"

He slowly, simply said, "I know and trust that we care deeply for one another. And, that is all that can be said."

She frowned back at him for a moment, and then with something resigned in her, she put her head back down to his shoulder in more of a loose lean this time.

"Do you believe what some of the crew believe?" he asked her after a couple minutes. "About myself and James?"

"I've told you what I'm sure about; that you want him to change. I never thought it was more than that, but at the same time...I guess I do worry."

He couldn't have articulated why he wanted her to know this. "If I truly wanted to be able to forgive him, I have reason to believe I could."

"Why?"

"...Because James was regretful of what he did," Spock said. "More precisely: He was ashamed."

.

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.

The fleeting sense of serenity between crises was interrupted the next day when Sulu marched into Spock's cabin with a stiff agitation and no kind of greeting, carrying his compact PADD which he slid in a carelessly blunt way onto Spock's desk.

"Have you seen this?" he demanded. Spock only reached for the PADD and Sulu took his lack of already knowing what he could be referring to as a no. "It's Chekov's witness report of the incident with Kirk. I've already asked him to meet us here if that's alright with you."

Sulu must have requested an early start on the reports, something Spock would have done if he was more neutrally disposed to the subject. He barely had time to look into his personal files for his own copies before his cabin door slid open to reveal a reluctant Pavel Chekov whom Sulu ushered in with a mildly impatient gesture.

"What the hell, Pavel?"

"I know, sir." Chekov, who usually only called Sulu "sir" in private under a friendly sort of sarcasm, said it in a gruff apologetic way now.

"You didn't think to say anything about this last night?"

Chekov blinked in a look of earnest confusion that faded to something nervous or chagrined. "Uh, well, you would know that policy prohibits any interpersonal discussion of any incidents like this until the individual reports have been reviewed by the highest officers on board, if not a higher admiralty."

Apparently Sulu had at least half forgotten this fact. He gave a blank sigh and then said, "We're gonna have to consider this the review. It's up to the captain, but I'm definitely not eager to let this information leave the ship."

"Ensign Chekov, I have yet to view any of the reports," Spock evenly interjected. "I need a comprehensive summary of the events you witnessed."

For a moment Chekov could only look about to splutter into a story that had no graceful beginning; Spock realized the ensign was not sure he would be believed.

In what seemed a gesture of impatient mercy, Sulu declared, "It would seem, from what Chekov witnessed, that Veralis, Manning, and Wade dragged or lured Kirk out of his cell so that they could assault him."

Spock's command senses kicked up, making him demand of Chekov, "Is this true?"

"There may have been others involved, sir, but...what I saw was two of them holding him down..."

"_Jesus_," Sulu said. "Did anyone else see?"

"No. They don't know that I saw anything other than what looked like them attempting to apprehend him, which of course supported their story, so they weren't worried about me. That was the other reason I waited; I thought they deserved a chance to be honest..."

"You are as of late the most commendably professional officer among the bridge crew, Ensign," Spock said. "I will send another communication if I need any further embellishment on your report."

A little startled by the sudden dismissal, Chekov nodded and left just after exchanging a look with Sulu.

Once they were alone, Spock let a moment drag past without saying anything to his first officer, who was stuck in a position of crossed arms with his mind traveling through some angered daydream.

"Hikaru."

The use of Sulu's first name seemed to surprise him into more of a tired calmness. He came a few steps forward, untangling his arms in a helpless gesture. "What the hell is happening to this crew?"

"...I am aware it's agitating to answer rhetorical questions, but I am compelled to answer nevertheless. Sit down." He slid forward a pitcher of water and got out a glass for Sulu, who accepted it with a twitch of his mouth. "I owe it to the best crew I am ever likely to work with to no longer package these facts in euphemisms, if it could be said I ever thought I had the need to. Approximately a year ago we lost a crewmember to an ambiguous murder committed by one of a group of prisoners who escaped; months later, I invited one of those people, who I knew fully well was a dangerous man, onto this ship for the purpose of helping me construct a near-miracle which I hoped to attain out of some amount of a sense of duty but mostly out of sheer emotional necessity."

Across the desk Sulu was sighing.

"As an amalgamation of general attitude, it can be said that this vessel currently has no captain, or at least that the captain could not be me. What is happening is that this crew no longer trusts me."

"You don't know that." Sulu shook his head. "You don't know that. Not everybody feels like that."

"I do hope, but doubt, that your assumption is right." Spock stood. "We may further discuss this at a later time. Computer, locate Lieutenant Veralis."

All three of the officers reported to have been involved were known to spend much of their recreation hours together, which conveniently put them all just outside the gymnasium at that time. The area was mostly empty but for them when Spock came steadily marching up and demanded they stand at attention. All three were wide-eyed in surprise at the sudden command presence, but stiffened up obediently.

"I have been told that the three of you were involved in a deliberate assault on one of our ship's prisoners. I have this on a neutral and reliable perspective so I will charitably advise you to be thoroughly truthful."

The cut-down expressions confirmed everything, Manning's the only face that looked a little paled. The other two seemed most likely the instigators: too angry to be remorseful.

"A confirmation will suffice," he prompted.

A response finally came from Wade: "That bastard killed Lillie Freeman. Thanks to you he was never tried for it, but we all know he did it. You put him on this ship and you expect—"

"I expect my crew to prove themselves a better example of a just civilization than he is, which all of you have failed to do." He took a moment to glance evenly at all three. "I need no enlightenment of what that man is capable of doing. What I need to know is whether he was responsible for his own removal from the brig."

"I programmed the security system to unlock, sir," Manning admitted. It seemed to take her great effort to elaborate to the next part, and then she said a little wryly, "As far as I could tell Kirk was only going to go get something from the replicator when he realized the door was open. Maybe it's been a while since he had a good beer."

With a pissed-off squint, Veralis said, "He was not going to—"

"Enough," Spock said. "According to the witness, Lieutenant, you were the main assailant. Can you admit it would be fair to hold you mostly accountable for these actions?"

With a sigh Wade admitted easily enough, "It was both of us. You should go easy on Manning; she wasn't into the idea."

"I'll have her opinion on the events. You and Lieutenant Veralis are currently on suspension pending court martial. I presume you can escort yourselves to the brig." As they gritted their teeth and began to walk stiffly off, he added, "Send my regards to Kirk."

Once it was the two of them, Manning swallowed and put on even more of an air of regret, as it she'd been obscuring it for the presence of her friends. After a hesitation she managed to protest, "Veralis and Freeman were very close."

He gave that a neutral nod.

"Jeremy got some bad news that day, everyone was in a rough mood, and when they got to thinking about how empty the ship was..." She shook her head at herself. "They suddenly realized what they might get away with, since nobody would believe his account of anything. And I didn't really have time to stop them...Even if I'd said I would directly tell you about it, it wouldn't have stopped them. They think he killed Lillie; it's as simple as that. And I'm willing to add that they're probably right, sir."

"Were you aware that there was a witness of the events when it was more clear that Kirk was being attacked?"

She frowned. "No."

"For your failure to divulge any of this, I'm suspending you as well. You're confined to your quarters for the next 36 hours and will report to me for an unofficial hearing in two days."

"Thank you, sir." She nodded and left.

A moment later he'd found the nearest computer that was discretely located, and designated the communications to summon Christine. He explained the situation to her as briefly as possible. She, unlike Sulu, said what hadn't been said.

"But..." She stammered, "Kirk said nothing to you about this? He just sat there and let you assume—?"

"He is a very intelligent man," he reminded her. "He did not bother because he knew that I would not believe him. Now I must ask you something. You are not currently scheduled to work in medical bay if I am correct..."

"No. Why?"

"I have to request that someone from sick bay confirm that Kirk is not seriously injured."

It was asking a substantial amount. He knew she had no desire to be so personal with Kirk, but with how easily she replied, one might have hardly guessed. She said, "I can do that, yeah."

"Thank you, Christine."

After Spock ended the transmission, he contemplated the implications of his actions and found himself troubled by them, and furthermore troubled that he did not seem quite troubled enough. Even in his moments of being the most accepting of his typically human traits he had never considered his ability for denial a desirable one, but at the moment he was far from denying the subtext of the exchange. If Kirk's injuries turned out to be more serious than he had presumed, the first medical officer who became aware of it would be technically required to report his delayed access to care as an inhumane negligence. Spock would not ask Christine to break the rules for him, and yet in a way he just had done so by specifically asking her to do the examination.

Many would consider bending the rules in this situation to be somehow subjectively fair, Spock knew, but he did not believe it was. Even if Spock estimated that the worst injury Kirk could have sustained was a bone fracture and his life hadn't been put at risk by the neglect, the fact that it had not even occurred to Spock that the cause of his wounds was anything other than his initial assumption spoke volumes about the depth of his recent weakness of mind. Surely there were other examples of ways in which he had become too lenient and too distracted, even forgetful.

His calculations of time had become even more emotional. He seemed to have little care for anything but how much had passed since the four had disappeared, and for the vague number of the time until they just might be recovered. One of the most elementary exercises in recognizing and suppressing emotion that was taught to young Vulcans was that time must never seem to move faster or slower. Speed of time suggests light emotions, slowness suggests dark; the path of logic is marked by a steady ever-constant stream.

He realized in a sudden quiet consternation that even if he had anyone from the past at his disposal, be it Nyota or Jim or his mother, and even if he spoke to Christine or attempted a more personal rapport with Sulu, he had no ideal source of advice for his current dilemma. It was simple enough to encourage a Vulcan to embrace his emotions, but to advise on or even understand the tension and delirium this produced was impossible because so few Vulcans ever did. It was an admittedly painful epiphany, that Spock may have behaved within the past many months in a way that might make a person who had encouraged his passions to ruefully realize the precariousness of them. Jim had been one of these people, and Spock had no way of knowing if he was still a good enough officer or a good enough man to be his second-in-command, much less currently in possession of the captain's chair.

It was when the _Enterprise_'s next instructions from Starfleet arrived that the consoling possibility occurred to him: If he could not seek the advice he needed from anyone from the past or the present, perhaps he could in someone from the future.

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.

Spock observed not for the first time that the brig was truly one of the darkest areas on the ship; there was sunlight outside when the _Enterprise_ docked, but one would never know the difference. It may have only been a confirmed assumption that Kirk looked exceptionally restless when the cell door slid open for Spock's entrance; he was shrugged back against the glum corner and busy with biting a thumbnail.

Something changed in him once Spock entered: a change which he was trying to hide but was nonetheless apparent. Kirk avoided his gaze in a way that for once reminded more of an embarrassed child than of a petulant one. He would have known as soon as he'd been relocated back to the brig cell that Spock knew what had really happened with the security team, but that had not made Spock expect this kind of behavior from him at their next meeting.

Finally Kirk looked up at him, eyes calm.

"You will accompany me planetside," Spock said.

This was clearly not what he'd expected to hear; his mouth quirked in confusion and Spock could see a dry comment forming fast.

"You will be chaperoned by a trustworthy member of security, and by myself when I am disposed."

He turned to prepare for his own departure without bothering to tell Kirk where it was they were stopped. James, in all the time of being escorted to the transporter room and waiting for Spock and then yawning at the ensign who had to pause to align his chronometer to the planet's time, apparently did not ask. He didn't seem in the mood to anticipate much of anything, but the lack of inquisitiveness from the usually mouthy inmate was oddly jarring.

Something grumbled in annoyance through Kirk's eyes once they had beamed down and walked far enough for him to realize they were among one of the new Vulcan colonies.

The two of them had actually discussed the future of the surviving Vulcan culture on one occasion while engaged in half-hearted but curious conversation late at night in the hangar bay. Spock had explained the divide that had shown its face among the Vulcan survivors almost the instant the people had begun their efforts to rebuild. A number of Vulcans, believing they needed time during their grief to focus on their spiritual priorities, had rejected the prompt utilitarian efforts of the other percentage to immediately encourage repopulation, the latter so insistent in this goal that they wanted to have the newly widowed remarry as soon as possible. Slightly less than half of the population, including most of the remaining mind healers in existence and also Spock's father, had remained on Terra for the time being; the rest were here on these dry plains that some might call the "back yard" of a small but resourceful and apparently charitable local colony.

Kirk had remarked that this seemed a cultural divide that could over time resemble as wide a gap as now existed between Romulan and Vulcan societies, and that that must have troubled Spock; at that point Spock had discontinued the conversation.

The official purpose of Kirk being allowed leave was that it had been recommended for his health; the security officers were obediently willing to simply let him sit outside and have the fresh air for a while. Spock left them to cross a small windy courtyard into the one tall and solid structure the colony had to call a conference building, checking that he was not too early.

There was only one Vulcan who had taken residence in this colony with whom Spock was acquainted, and Spock did not believe he was there in agreement with it, but rather as an innocent pretense that made him available to study its progression and perhaps solidify an identity in entirely new company.

"Captain Spock...I believe something in your appearance has changed," the older Vulcan said in greeting. They were paused in the middle of the welcome center, Spock holding his arms behind his back.

Spock was reminded of the man's affinity for artful statements: There should have been nothing notably different on the surface of him, but he knew what he'd meant. He said, "Yes."

The ambassador's modest suite within the premises had a generous window that looked out on the courtyard. A fireplace was crackling from across the room as Spock accepted a glass of water from his older counterpart.

"I will admit I have been troubled about the information that is circulating about what you intend to attempt," the ambassador said, and something in Spock bristled, perhaps unfairly, as he waited for him to keep speaking.

But the other seemed attuned to this response and fell into a quieter tact.

"Spock." The ambassador said it like it wasn't his own name anymore, like he didn't hear the word often enough to identify with it now. "You and I have not spoken since the accident, but I assure you that the news was devastating to me. I understand what you are feeling."

Spock felt as if he could predict the next part, that this was bitterly similar to his recent communications with his father, the attempts to promise he won't be this way forever, that grief must be traversed rather than undone. There was the never-ending implication that Spock had been unable to accept the more recent loss because it had been painful enough to see his mother ripped away. At most times he was able to deny this. And yet he could not so much as speak to his father without wondering if it had almost everything to do with her. He replied, "I respectfully doubt that you can completely understand."

The ambassador was stepping closer to demand, "Then would you tell me how it feels?"

It felt somehow preposterous for him to ask the words of him, and Spock almost wanted to say so. He looked over and didn't realize he was about to answer until he clumsily croaked, "Unfair...It feels unfair."

The older Vulcan just nodded.

"There are a great number of people who believe my actions are irrational. Those with an emotional perspective even think that I have taken this to an unacceptable level of obsession...I fear that if that were true I would not be able to stop. Perhaps I came here because I believe you are the best judge of my character." Spock concluded, "I would have your advice, ambassador, but not your pity. And certainly not your condolences, for I believe that the four are alive."

After a moment of contemplation the ambassador replied, "I find myself even at an old age not very accustomed to dispensing advice that is any more complicated than what is clearly in the receiver's best interests, but I will not attempt to persuade you out of something when I more than anyone should be able to tell when you are resolved. Your interests are no longer that of a Vulcan, no longer based on wisdom and survival alone. You have in a surprisingly short time come to push outside the boundaries of our particular logical nature, and it would seem a purely human piece of wisdom is all I can give you."

Spock looked down out the window; James Kirk was lounging on a stone bench by the spring outside, secluded and bored, but not without that look of his that was the look of a man attempting to reject his own deeper musings.

The ambassador said, "I would tell you simply to be sure not to do anything that Jim Kirk would not do. Only..."

"Only I have already broken that maxim?" Spock interrupted, his eyes not straying from the restless Kirk sitting outside, knowing the other was probably following his gaze.

"No."

Spock was surprised by that calmly certain word and turned his eyes directly back to the ambassador.

"No. I was about to say that you, being as young as you are, having as little time at your captain's side as you have had, are most likely only able to grasp a mere inkling of what he would have done, what he was capable of doing...if it were for somebody of great meaning to him."

Spock softened in a curious response to the words, to the way there was a remembering look in his counterpart's eyes.

His older self answered the unspoken question that must have been in his expression with only the slightest nod, his voice plain with devotion to its truth. "If it were for you."

After that Spock was left alone by the window as the older Vulcan set about making his tea in thoughtful silence.

He had not, even in his most eager acceptance of Jim Kirk as a closest friend and of his place aboard the _Enterprise_, accepted the concept of destiny, or that he was in any way beholden to align his life to whatever his counterpart could tell him of his parallel past. As he looked out and examined the irregular mannerisms of the man who shared a face with his stranded friend, he felt once and only then an affinity with the double, for what James must have been told by the man who in this world only wanted to tell Jim to be Spock's friend but in another life gave him a cold warning. He wondered if they could share the sentiment that "fate" often seemed like a crueler word than any other.

Spock quietly finished the tea that had been handed to him and then thanked the ambassador for his counsel. It was morning for most of the crew members, but he had not slept for nearly two days. He decided to retire to the ship and to his quarters, and he hoped, after some sleep and a little more time, that his plans would be as ripe and ready as Jim's had usually been.


End file.
